‎Boston Globe - Aug 23, 1964Robert F. Kennedy for the US Senate in New York. : "The Attorney General has evidenced no. ... Among those who signed the statement were Francis WH Adams, ..Frederick W. RichMond and Mrs. Marshall Field, all key contributors,....KENNEDY SWAMPS STRATTON TO WIN STATE NOMINATION; Democrats...

‎New York Times - Sep 2, 1964By RW APPLE Jr. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a sudden new power in New .... and former Police CommissionerI Francis WH Adams, a key Reform Democrat

....After order had been restored, the convention went into a sus- tained anti-climax--an hour ofseconding speeches, five for each candidate. Among the speakers were former Gov. Averell Harriman,now Under Secretary of State for Political Af- fairs, who backed Mr. Kennedy; and former Police Commissioner Francis W.H. Adams,a key Reform Democrat, who support- ed Mr. Stratton...

‎New York Times - Sep 17, 1964Reform Democrats who have shown skepticism over the senatorial candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy are giving him increasing support.....Francis W.H. Adams, chair -man of the Committee for Democratic Voters and a critic ofMr. kennedy, said yester- day that "in general" he would support the Democratic ticket,and Kennedy is on the ticket." I will not support of cam- paign for Senator Keating,: headded....

‎New York Times - Jun 9, 1966Francis WH Adams, the former Police Commissioner who has long been active in ...charged yesterday that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was "no more interested inreform of the Democratic party than was William Marcy Tweed.KENNEDY CENTER OF PRIMARY FIGHT; Adams Challenges Him to...

New York Times - Jun 21, 1966... Francis WH Adams challenged Senator Robert F. Kennedy yesterday to a television debate on the Democratic primary fight for Manhattan surrogate. ...

Francis W. H. Adams, a lawyer, a leader in New York City's Reform Democratic movement and a former New York City Police Commissioner, died of heart failure yesterday at Devon Manor, a convalescent home in Devon, Pa. He was 85 years old and also had an apartment in Manhattan....

...He later became embroiled in Reform Democratic politics and served as chairman of the advisory council of the Committee for Democratic Voters. In 1964, he was named to a panel investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and later that year was an early opponent of the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy as Senator from New York. In 1970, he left the Democratic Party to announce his support for a fourth term for the Republican Governor, Nelson A. Rockefeller....

Specter had to have known this. Which is why he did what he did to Tomlinson. Which is why he rehearsed probably the longest leasing question in the history of jurisprudence to get the doctors to agree with him about it, and still then they would not.

And this is why there is no mention of O, P. Wright in the WR, and no evidence Specter ever interviewed him.

SSD, in my view, proves that the bullet was even planted on the wrong stretcher.

Specter was on a jihad. And isn't it interesting that the guy who was supposed to be teamed with him, Francis Adams, essentially dropped out of the proceedings. (Rodger Remington, Biting the Elephant, p. 53) Never to be heard from again.

It is a shame that neither the Church Committee nor the HSCA called in Adams for an interview.

But once Adams dropped out, Specter had free rein to do whatever he wanted to do to make the SIngle Bullet Fantasy work, and he did. Including accepting the utter and complete fraudulence of CE 399.

Francis Adams, according to Specter, was an extremely wealthy high-priced New York attorney who wanted to sign off on the FBI report, and had no interest in getting his hands dirty. He didn't have the time to devote to the case that eager-beaver suck-up Specter did. According to Specter, Adams, after a short absence, showed up on the day Specter was to interview the autopsy doctors, and was humiliated when Chief Justice Warren confused him for one of the doctors. So humiliated that he never showed up again...

Warren refused to replace him, however, and made establishing the basic facts of the shooting Specter's responsibility. This dumping of this responsibility into the relatively inexperienced Specter's lap so enraged the Warren Commission's chief defender, David Belin, that he actually complained about it in his books. He said he found Warren's letting politics interfere with the investigation "chilling."

There's a problem with this scenario, however. The doctors testified in mid-March, 1964.

Could it simply be that Francis WH Adams learned a lot from the experience of acting like a clown when he was "investigating" the Morro Castle tragedy resulting in the loss of 134 lives, and "prosecuting" the wrong people? The real question is why Francis WH Adams would agree to an appointment to the Warren Commission, in the first place. DId he think the New York metro area populace suffered from amnesia?At the least, Adams conducted a flawed prosecution and investigation with the result that Charles W. Rogers escaped any accusations from Adams's prosecution team.

Pay-Per-View -Asbury Park Press - Nov 5, 2006he found no hard evidence in the FBI file that Rogers did anything other than his duty the ...the Morro Castle tragedy off the Jersey coast has been shrouded in mystery. ... in October by Free Press, is the first to draw from the FBI's voluminous Morro72 years ago did a Jersey city man cause the Morro Castle Disaster and the death of her captain?An accident or deliberate act? Ship tragedy still a mysteryBY SHANNON MULLEN, Asbury Park Press

For 72 years, the Morro Castle tragedy off the Jersey coast has been shrouded in mystery.

Was the fire that swept through the luxury liner at the end of its weeklong cruise to Havana deliberately set?

Was the captain's sudden death just hours before the fire the result of a heart attack, or was it foul play?

And what about radioman George W. Rogers, who initially was hailed as a hero for remaining at his post to transmit distress calls despite the encroaching flames? Was he actually the villian of the story, responsible for the deaths of at least 134 passengers and crew?

Judging from Brian Hicks' new book about the doomed ship, the answers to those questions might never be known for sure.

Several books have been written on the subject over the years, but "When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake," published in October by Free Press, is the first to draw from the FBI's voluminous Morro Castle case file, which was declassified in the mid 1990s as a result of a court fight by a group of researchers including retired Belmar photojournalist James T. McDonnell.

Vivid narrative account.....

Several books have been written on the subject over the years, but "When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake," published in October by Free Press, is the first to draw from the FBI's voluminous Morro Castle case file, which was declassified in the mid 1990s as a result of a court fight by a group of researchers including retired Belmar photojournalist James T. McDonnell.

Vivid narrative account

Despite the book jacket's provocative wording ("On a shipboard night of art-deco glamour, a madman worked his evil"), Hicks, a senior writer for The Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston, S.C., doesn't claim to have solved the mystery. In fact, he found no hard evidence in the FBI file that Rogers did anything other than his duty the night of the fire, despite the fact that he later proved to be a murderous psychopath.

Instead, "When the Dancing Stopped" offers a vivid narrative account of the Morro Castle's fateful final voyage and its aftermath, focusing on a handful of central characters. Chief among them is the late Thomas S. Torresson Jr., a longtime Dover Township, N.J., resident who was then a 16-year-old third assistant purser aboard the Morro Castle.

Though the book reads like a mystery novel, Hicks, a 39-year-old veteran journalist who also is co-author of "Raising the Hundley," is adamant that nothing in the story is fictionalized. That includes the dialogue, which is all based on sworn testimony, letters, memos, interviews or newspaper accounts.

"It's not really history if you make some of it up," Hicks said in a recent telephone interview.....

books.google.com/books?isbn=0743280083Brian Hicks - 2006 - HistoryThe prosecutors, editorial writers and Morro Castle survivors declared that justice had been served, but they overlooked one detail highlighted by the trial: the cause of the fire remained a mystery.

New York Times - Sep 11, 1934Francis X. Fay, chief of he Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice , said that his agents had been engaged in locating various members of the of the crew and other , many of whom will get subpoenas for appearance before the inquiry.

FIRE RULES SEEN VIOLATED ON SHIP; Federal Attorney Insists...
‎
$3.95 -
New York Times - Nov 16, 1935 Francis WH Adams, United States Attorney, who is prosecuting two officers of the vessel ... of life, laid in the indictment to the failure of William F. Warms, acting captain; Henry E. Cabaud, executive vice president of the line, and Ebn S. Abbott.

New York Times - Jan 6, 1937Dedsion Reserved on Appeals by Acting Captain and Engineer Convicted of ... William F. Warms, acting master of the Ward liner Morro Castle, and Eben S. Abbott, ... Francis WH Adams, who ob- tained the convictions, said that Warms, as firstWARMS IS CLEARED IN 134 SHIP DEATHS; Court Also Absolves...

‎New York Times - Apr 8, 1937The United States Circuit Court of Appeals set aside yesterday in a unanimous ...Warms and Abbott, the court held, could not be held responsible for ...Dead Captain Blamed In Fire .Appeals...‎ Milwaukee Journal

Francis Xavier Fay had moved on as well. Months before the verdict, the Bureau of Investigation's New York special agent in charge had ac- cepted a job as head of secuirty for Macy's department store. he had not lost interest in the Morro Castle, however most likely read the accounts of the negligence trial closely. What he had to notice most was the name conspiculously absent from the list of the convicted.In his final months with the Bureau, Fay had spent as much time on the Morro Castle case as he had the Lindbergh kidnapping. When he left, he turned over all his files and notes on the case, his reports on the leads he had chased. He just assumed the Bureau would finish the case he felt he had come so close to cracking. Fay believed he had found the culprit, and that man had not stood trial with Warms, Abbott and Cabaud.

Throughout the fall of 1934 and the spring of 1935--while Fay had been forced to waste his time examining singed brass and studying the flammability of cleaning solutions--he had agenst around the country checking into the background of the man he considered the most likely suspect in the Morro Castle case: George White Rogers.

The radioman had proven a much more complicated and troubled man than even Fay had suspected....

(Continued from article displayed at the very beginning of this post):

‎Asbury Park Press - Nov 5, 2006he found no hard evidence in the FBI file that Rogers did anything other than his duty the ...the Morro Castle tragedy off the Jersey coast has been shrouded in mystery. ... in October by Free Press, is the first to draw from the FBI's voluminous Morro

.........Rogers' sinister side

Rogers basked in the praise the press heaped on him from the moment he first came ashore. A Broadway theater booked him for a lucrative weeklong run, and his hometown of Bayonne feted him as a hero. But as the FBI soon discovered, Rogers had a sinister side.

A smarmy, nearly 300-pound man with oddly pursed lips and what Torresson described as a menacing air, Rogers brought trouble with him wherever he went. In his school days, he had been expelled for sodomizing a younger boy, Hicks relates, and prior to joining the crew of the Morro Castle he was suspected of torching the radio shop he worked at to conceal the fact that he was stealing from his employer.

An electronics whiz, he was hired after the Morro Castle incident to modernize the Bayonne police department's radio system, but when his supervisor, Vincent Doyle, was nearly killed by a homemade bomb, the evidence led straight to Rogers, who was ultimately convicted of the crime.

According to Doyle's unpublished memoir, Rogers had good reason for wanting him dead.

One day while the two were alone in their workshop, Hicks writes, Rogers boasted to Doyle that he knew precisely how the Morro Castle fire had started. He described in detail how an incendiary fountain pen filled with acid and combustible powder, separated by a thin sheet of copper -- which acted as a timing device -- had been planted in the breast pocket of a waiter's jacket that was hung in the Writing Room locker. When the copper sheet dissolved, the pen exploded, igniting turpentine and paint that was stored in the locker.

Stunned, Doyle said he pressed Rogers about how he knew such specifics, and finally asked him, "Why did you do it?" "For a second, Rogers said nothing," Hicks recounts, "then spewed vitriol with his answer: 'The Ward Line stinks and the skipper was lousy.' " Incredibly, after just a few years behind bars for the bombing, Rogers was granted a wartime parole to serve as a radioman aboard a U.S. Liberty ship. During his brief service, he helped oust the ship's captain, whom he accused of being a Nazi sympathizer.

Afterward, Rogers went to work in a Jersey City electronics plant. While he was there, he was suspected of poisoning the water cooler after a female co-worker he was obsessed with married another man. Finally, in 1953, Rogers was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal slayings of a neighborhood friend and his adult daughter in Bayonne. Less than five years later, Rogers died of a heart attack, without having divulged any more secrets about the Morro Castle.

The FBI case file shows that it had long suspected Rogers was involved in the Morro Castle fire, and possibly even Captain Willmott's death, but the circumstantial evidence against him only proved he was capable of such a sinister crime, and he was never charged.

James T. McDonnell and Fred Rasmussen, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, who together fought the FBI to gain access to its case file on the Morro Castle, suspected that Rogers set the fire as part of an insurance conspiracy by the Ward Line, and for years they promised to publish a book that would prove their theory. They never did find conclusive evidence, though, and after McDonnell developed health problems, the project was shelved.

"Bob and I both think it's there. We felt we got close to it," Rasmussen said.

Hicks doesn't make any definitive claims about Rogers' culpability, preferring to lay out the available evidence so readers can "draw their own conclusion."

In essence, he said, what the book reveals is that "all the rumors about this guy were probably right, and here are some reasons why." With just a few survivors left -- Hicks knows of only three -- and the FBI case file now laid bare, that might be the closest anyone can come to cracking the case.....

news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat...id...sjid...Rogers, a television repair man, is accused In the bludgeon killings of his Bayonne neighbors and friends, William Hummel. and. Edith, last year. Duffy ordered

‎nytimes.com - Nov 6, 1988The fire was set by Mr. Rogers of Bayonne, the ship's chief radio operator. ... Vincent Doyle that he, Mr. Rogers had set the fire, using a time-delayed exploding ... his elderly neighbor, William Hummel, and the neighbor's daughter, Edith.

books.google.com/books?isbn=1563114739Turner Publishing - 1998 - HistoryFrancis X. Fay (1922-35), Rowayton, Connecticut served as SAC at Pittsburgh during ... From 1936 until retirement in 1965 he was head of security at Macy's... of the New York Office of the Army Counterintelligence Corps during World War II.

Francis Adams, according to Specter, was an extremely wealthy high-priced New York attorney who wanted to sign off on the FBI report, and had no interest in getting his hands dirty. He didn't have the time to devote to the case that eager-beaver suck-up Specter did. According to Specter, Adams, after a short absence, showed up on the day Specter was to interview the autopsy doctors, and was humiliated when Chief Justice Warren confused him for one of the doctors. So humiliated that he never showed up again...

Warren refused to replace him, however, and made establishing the basic facts of the shooting Specter's responsibility. This dumping of this responsibility into the relatively inexperienced Specter's lap so enraged the Warren Commission's chief defender, David Belin, that he actually complained about it in his books. He said he found Warren's letting politics interfere with the investigation "chilling."

There's a problem with this scenario, however. The doctors testified in mid-March, 1964.

What do you see? Francis Adams taking the testimony of Lawrence O'Brien on May 26, 1964...

Yep, Adams did not disappear. He simply stepped aside and let Specter make, and put his name on, the commission's conclusions regarding the medical evidence and shooting scenario.

In short, I suspect Adams stepped aside because he was uncomfortable second-guessing the FBI and SS, and had no interest in pushing the single-bullet theory on the commission.

According to The Encyclopedia of American Law Enforcement by Michael Newton, "Adams disbelieved the magic bullet theory that described one rifle slug apparently defying all known laws of physics, and he left Specter to write the chapter alone. Enduring controversy surrounds the Warren Report, but it left Adams unscathed."

According to the HSCA, Adams worked a total of sixteen eight-hour days. Lee Rankin told the HSCA "that there is one member that you can see did not attend hardly at all, and I certainly should have gotten rid of him really***That was Francis Adams and he really didn't contribute anything."

Years earlier Rankin told Edward Epstein that he "had seriously considered asking for Adams' formal resignation, but as such an action might be misinterpreted as a sign of dissension among the staff, he decided to 'leave Adams' name on the report." (Inquest), p 74)

From Bill Kelly's blog:

You probably never heard of Francis William Holbrook Adams, but he was a New York City Police Commissioner (54-55) who was appointed Senior Counsel to the Warren Commission and given responsibility for developing the basic facts of the case.

Adams was a no-nonsense guy, and when he realized there wouldn't be any real investigation, he didn't bother to do anything, though his name is still on the Report. By backing out however, Adams gave the Junior counsel on the commission to step up and make a name for himself.

Here's a book review that I wrote when the book came out in 2000. - BK

Excerpt:

Specter notes that he was the junior attorney handling that area, while the senior lawyer was Francis W. H. Abrams, a former New York City police commissioner (1954-1955), who was quoted in the New York Post as calling the Kennedy assassination, “just another first-degree murder case.” According to Specter, “Adams thought the commission should conduct an incisive, piercing investigation, wrap up the matter, and file its report.”

“Of course,” as Specter said Abrams usually began a sentence, when Abrams realized that no such incisive, piercing, first-degree homicide investigation would take place, he left most of the work up to the junior attorney, who wrote in this book that, “The commission had hired a team of lawyers from around the country, accomplished but with limited courtroom and investigative experience.

In an interview with Edward Epstein "Adams said that although he had a different concept of the investigation -- he thought the the FBI Summary and Supplemental Reports should have been verified immediately, so that the basic facts of the assassination could have been made public immediately -- the reason he left the Commission was that his law firm needed his services." (Inquest, p 74)

In their books, Fonzi and McKnight seemed to accept this explanation.

While writing Inquest, Ed Epstein kept a diary. He wrote this about Adams in 1965:

The area of resolving the central facts of the shooting, "Panel 1," was assigned to Francis Adams, a former New York City Police Commissioner, in early January. Adams had the impression it was only a two-month part-time job, and, when the investigation was delayed, he returned to his own law practice. Meanwhile, in January, Specter, who had known Willens from the Law Review at Yale, had been assigned as a junior lawyer to help Adams. Since Adams failed to show up for the investigation he was supposedly in charge, Specter took over (though the Commissioners themselves did not realize that Adams had de facto retired.). He had virtually the entire burden of establishing the sequence of which shots hit which person in the assassination.

What's ironic is that during December 16, 1963 Executive Session, while discussing hiring Adams, Senator Russell called for "a man that would take this FBI report and this CIA report and go through it and analyze every contradiction and every soft spot in it, just as if he were prosecuting them....."

Another in a series of attempts to moderate the posting activity of Mike Rago.

If you recall that you posted on this thread and your post addressed, quoted, or replied to a Mike Rago post in this thread, your post has beenmoved to a thread titled, Rago's "Arlen Specter has passed away" at this link:

When a thread not authored by Mike Rago transforms into a thread dominated or flooded by Mike Rago's posts or descends to being about Mike Rago instead of about the topic in the thread's OP, an attempt will be made to "rescue" the thread by moving the distraction out of the thread.

To insure that your post remains in the thread you've posted in and you observe that Rago posts are flooding the thread, do not mention or quote Rago in your post.